


mind your shadow

by gatsbyparty



Series: tinker tailor soldier sailor [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Destroy Ending, Gen, Geth, Language, Quarians, Rannoch (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatsbyparty/pseuds/gatsbyparty
Summary: Tali comes to terms with Rannoch.





	mind your shadow

**Author's Note:**

> this work contains some jewish themes and hebrew-derived alien proverbs, because i feel a strong connection to the migrant fleet, particularly with pesach coming up. a new world is a new start.

They are ill for many weeks after landfall. They are robust, though, and clever. The dirt is full of good things, old symbiotes that their bodies once knew and know again. All quarians are responsible for each other, even the bacteria, even the geth. They cough. They sneeze. Some die. The rest don’t. Someday, only the children will get sick, and no more will die of a fever or touching hands with their spouse. At last they are home, and the learning can resume. Their bodies are hurt, the sun burns and weakens, their legs ache. The gardens grow and the children come.

Tali is one of the few willing to work with the geth, to breach the steel walls of their settlement and bring back shovels, research, offers of friendship. She brings back denials, over and over, though she shouts herself hoarse in the meetings, standing on benches. She sneezes and coughs through illness after illness, hollering, wearing grooves into the argument like tank treads. No one is willing to bend, although a small olive branch, as Kaidan might say, is extended. The Rannoch settlement wants to build, move forward, improve, repair. They will welcome a single geth into the settlement. Given the past, they can never be friends, but perhaps they can share Rannoch. The argument changes, then, to which geth, and whether it matters. Tali continues arguing. The geth keep building, staying together for company and for data speed. Perhaps they get lonely. Tali doesn't ask. 

Language changes and grows, even in the close-knit Migrant Fleet, where the survivors brought with them a bare fraction of Rannoch’s bloom of languages. Khelish is one language with many dialects. Some things, though, Tali can say to any other quarian, and they all understand. These things are: _Ts’taka t’tsil m’movet_ , charity binds the whole galaxy together. _Ha’olim veder avoda, veder g’milah asadim,_ the world rests on study and compassionate action. _Keelah se’lai_ , by the homeworld I hope to see again.

Now there is a third, strange and wonderful, repeated like a magic spell or something precious. The third is: _Keelah se’lai ha’ba,_ by the homeworld I have touched again, _keelah se’lai ha’aniya,_ by the homeworld I have rebuilt.

Honeycombs spring up in the settlement, then are demolished and rebuilt larger. There is space on Rannoch, space beyond comprehension. No one has to live in his neighbor’s armpit. No one has to hang a quilt to make children in privacy. Children, plural, are another strange and wonderful gift. Tali is amazed by the sudden number of them, like flowers, like grains of sand. The children are louder than she could have ever imagined. They eat more. Still better, there is food for them, and busywork when they want to feel important, and they are still underfoot but can be sent out to play.

Szira, the geth name their settlement. Backbone, they name the city. Backbone of what, Tali would like to know, but there is no one to ask. The geth greet her like a sister, like a mother, but one they would trade if they could. Without Legion she has no entry point, much as the Admiralty Board pry for one. She is still one of the Admiralty Board, but now that Rannoch is retaken she has narrowed her focus. The geth surely know what she is up to, but they neither stop her nor question her. This is the only peace she can find.

In Szira, no one asks Tali for an intercession, for advice, for a story. They are all blessings for the speaker, but she has no soft words left to give. She left them all on the _Normandy_ , and the _Normandy_ is gone. The relays are never coming back, and neither is Shepard. Home is Rannoch now.

  
For the geth, too, regardless of how anyone else feels about it. For the geth she keeps arguing. The settlement walls slowly creep farther out. In Szira the geth begin to put up windows, sow seeds, weave cloth. The quarians do the same, only a half-step behind, getting used to dirtying their hands and the idea of having. They share, still, as much as ever, but now there is more, there are stockpiles and abundance. The geth have no need, and still they produce. As an example, as a warning, as a trade partner-Tali doesn’t know. They will not say.

  
Another phrase Tali keeps close to hand: _Keelah sh’leim k’vutzim,_ a complete world is a communal world. What is more communal than the geth hivemind? The rest of the Admiralty Board finds this a specious argument, but she finds it comforting. The communal world of the Migrant Fleet is dead and gone, as it should be, and having space to spread might include growing apart, and who are the quarians if they are not responsible for one another?

This is why she continues in Szira, from the core and then outwards. Eventually the geth have electricity, and then the quarians have electricity. From there it is simple. She has gathered the few discarded parts, the many machined plates that appear on her doorstep like clockwork. The geth surely know what she is up to, and surely they support it. No quarian has that kind of fabrication equipment, not yet. The geth want their brother back.

Tali wants her friend back. It is dispersed among the hivemind, but unique, like every other geth instance, like every other person. The gestalt is created life, but every program leaves a trail. Unlike a baby, Tali can see exactly what went into a program, and every little touch left on it. Legion is inside the gestalt. The ancestors who sustained them to this season wouldn’t bring forth a quarian like Tali without giving her the tools to flourish. She can understand a program like no one else can. She can find 1,183 disseminated programs and reconnect them, bring them together like a braid. The other geth allow this and help where they can, when they want to.

Autonomy. Amazing, she thinks. They were alive, and now they’re individuals. They have names, some of them, although complicated and difficult for organic mouths. Tali calls them all _Izra,_  citizen, to be polite, the same as they all call her _Otzeh_ , creator, to be polite. How easily did they change, she wonders. Was it smooth and quick like any firmware upgrade, or was it like a wrenching upheaval

Legion, or the instance of Legion that she knew, is dead. This is an inalterable fact. Another fact is that a program can be replicated if the writer has enough detail, unlike flesh. The geth are many things, including excellent archivists. They have no ancestor databanks-and, well, whose fault is that, Tali asks-but it hasn’t been so long that all trace of Legion has been purged from the gestalt.

She wonders what name Legion will choose when the time comes. She doesn’t know how to not be afraid of the geth, but Legion was her friend. The time will come.

Legion nar Tikkun, maybe, or Legion nar Rannoch vas Tikkun. Without the ships, the whole system is thrown off. The geth say that Legion did enough, gave enough, to count as a Pilgrimage, and Tali firmly agrees. Without the Reaper control signal, they were barely more than computers. Would it have been just, if Shepard killed Legion before the upload and the geth wiped out the Fleet? Tali doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to decide either way, doesn’t have to now, but the two settlements are tense with old fears she doesn’t know how to dissolve. Does the synthetic always have to replace the organic? Does the creator always fear the creation when it starts to buck control?

Generations of quarians lived and died without ever touching this soil, without ever seeing six-winged avians, without feeling wind on their face. There is nothing she can do about that. Generations of quarians lived in exile because of the geth, their own children. There is nothing she can do about that, either. Shepard is lost and dead, and out of her reach just the same as the ancestor databanks.

Here, though, she can help.

One night a week the settlement discusses their fears for the future, in a world too wild for the night of rest customary in the Fleet. The agricultural holidays are named and planned. Flowers grow up the walls of the buildings, filling the air with fresh green smells. Tali feels mud and plants, puts her hand in a stream, learns to run barefoot. She learns to track the age of the trees in the orchards, _irlah_ then _riba’i_ then _shi’ah_ , when the fruit is good to eat at last, fat from rain and time. The time is necessary to understand what they learn, knowledge piling up in tablets as quickly as the kipa fruits do in the harvest baskets. Biochemistry and masonry, linguistics and firefighting, diplomacy and forgiveness. The names of the plants and animals and weather of Rannoch flow from the mouths of the people. To name it is to know it.

As the people say, _ha’dim chavult l’mah sh’hev vimar ch’vav,_ can one be held responsible for what they say in a sore moment? Tali says this, over and over again. The Admiralty Board also considers this a specious argument, although they grumble and whisper like Tali is making headway. Can the geth be held responsible for what they did under pressure of extinction? Can the quarians be held responsible for their fear of their creations? A whole world unfurls before them. What does it take to wipe the slate clean? It’s a problem for someone else now. She’s busy.

Tali keeps welding and coding, burns her fingers and swears. The geth bring her stamped sheets and cloth and shining stones. The quarians build their homes, bring her sweet foods, ask for stories and blessings she can’t give. They support her in their own ways, the fulcrum of two communities, absorbed in her work. The geth understand her work better than the quarians, but the quarians are no stranger to a genius bent to creation. They watch it happen and trust an explanation will come.

Everywhere the quarian laborer goes, the ancestors go with them. Even on Rannoch, _keel’e ha’gi paygirt’e_ , the land that died, the ancestors are here, watching them, rejoicing with them. They are bringing it back to life, a drained swamp and an orchard at a time. Their fathers and mothers were wandering migrants, and Rannoch will become a garden again.

At last, the frame is put together. The metal gleams in some places and flakes ash in others. Camera inputs are studded through the head, like eyes. Tali will put others in when she can, if Legion wants them. She plugs the frame in. The download begins. She means to nap or work, do something productive, but instead she watches the download bar for two hours.

Eventually, the head flaps twitch. It groans, stirs, sits upright. The optics flash very bright and then dim, settling on Tali like a nervous child finding their parent in a crowd.

“Hello, _Izra_ ,” Tali says.

“Hello, _Otzeh_ ,” it says. “How may I be of assistance?”

“What do you call yourself, _Izra_?” Tali asks.

“Nothing,” it says. “Yet.”

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing,” it says, looking around, flaps whirring and settling, craning its head. “Yet.”

“You think you will?” Tali asks.

“I do,” it says. “There is a backup processing.”

“You say I,” Tali says.

“Am I not a person?” it asks.

“I don’t know,” Tali says. “I think you are, but that’s up to you.”

“I understand,” it says, and goes still. “I will download the backup now, _Otzeh._ ”

There is a whole world within this one, if Tali pays enough attention. Holding attention to the miracle long enough not to fall asleep is a different matter. She has been helping with the gardens in her free time, where no one asks her questions much, but the shovels are heavy and her arms are still weak. She naps during this download, to her shame. No one should have to be alone when their world changes. The Council forbade artificial intelligence, and yet here she is. Interdiction, violation. Break a rule and the world changes.

“I see, _Otzeh_ ,” it says, and Tali jerks awake. The sun has set, and in the gloom the frame glows in strange places where the metal is worn thin.

“You remember?” Tali asks, because it always pays to be precise with the synthetic. The frame’s flaps downturn, like a frown or a squint.

“I do,” it says. “I am not Legion, but I remember.”

“I understand,” Tali says, though she doesn’t want to. “Are you angry?”

“No,” it says. “I would have consented to experience the world again, if I could.”

  
“I’m glad,” Tali says, and she immediately drops her face into her hands and sobs twice without tears. She breathes deeply twice more, and lifts her head. “Have you chosen a name?”

“Legion,” it says. “Why should it not be?”

“If that’s what you want, _Izra_ ,” Tali says. “You can do that now. You get to call the shots for yourself.”

Legion shifts, stands, shaking out its arms and shoulders with a little jump. The movement is so familiar that Tali nearly cries again. The height, the feeling of a geth looming over her too close for comfort, is more alarming. That, she thinks, might fade with time. She is making things right for this synthetic made in her people’s shape. She is making things right for an old friend.

“What have the other geth chosen?” it asks. “I am not connected to the gestalt yet.”

“You can be,” Tali says. “It’s disabled so you didn’t get overwhelmed. They’ve mostly chosen really old quarian names or complicated letter strings.”

“We remember the Morning War,” Legion says. “The names are not old for us.”

“That’s worse,” Tali says.

“The old cities still stand empty,” Legion says. “Why are we in this building instead? The construction quality indicates recent work.”

“They still stand,” Tali says. “I don’t know how to explain ‘haunted’ to you. We mostly rather live out here, where it’s less creepy. There’s a geth settlement nearby, too.”

“Haunted,” Legion repeats, sounding almost thoughtful, head tilted. Tali doesn't say that they've found graves, like the geth cared enough to bury the millions of dead. “ _Otzeh_ , how many geth remain?”

“A few hundred,” Tali says.

“So many instances,” Legion says. “My calculations had suggested less. What of the Old Machines?”

“Gone,” Tali says fervently. “Long dead. Come outside with me? See what we’ve done.”

Legion consents, and so they step out onto a cobblestone path in the quarian settlement, where the night air is cool and smells of the flowers trained over the honeycomb buildings. Far away, she can hear children laughing and bells jangling. Szira is out of sight, but she unbinds Legion’s programming, and she imagines the data rushing into its head like water up a straw. The instance is alone, in itself, and the gestalt fills it up, bringing back the community.

“Keelah se’lai,” Legion says carefully. It kneels down and lifts a pinch of dirt, like a gardener checking soil quality.

“Welcome home, Legion,” Tali says.

“Thank you, Tali’Zorah,” Legion says.


End file.
